Modern information handling systems use processors that typically generate a substantial amount of heat. Thermal throttling techniques exist that sense the temperature of the processor. When the processor's temperature exceeds a predetermined threshold, the system throttles or reduces the processor's clock rate to correspondingly reduce the processor's temperature. In this manner, the system prevents undesirable overheating. Alternatively the system may employ clock gating, i.e. stopping the processor's clock, to reduce the processor's temperature.
Power consumption is a limiting factor in current day processor power system design. The system designer typically designs a processor power system to provide up to a predetermined maximum power limit that the processor may consume. During processor manufacture, the manufacturer may test to determine if a processor operating at a sample workload power exceeds the maximum power limit. The manufacturer may reject those processors that exceed the maximum power limit while running a sample workload. Unfortunately, it is possible that a real world workload using real world software applications may exceed the sample workload power limit. To address this situation, a system may employ an artificial maximum power workload limit. However, using such an artificial maximum power workload limit may either decrease processor yield or require the system to provide more power to the processor. Both of these approaches undesirably increase system cost.
Modern information handling systems (IHSs) often employ a voltage regulator module (VRM) to control the voltage or power that a power source provides to the processor of the IHS. VRMs typically include a voltage ID (VID) register that controls the output voltage of the VRM. The VRM supplies the processor with an output voltage that depends on the VID value that the VID register stores. In this manner, the same VRM model may supply multiple processors that have different voltage needs. Unfortunately, the values or attributes of IHS components such as the processor and power system may vary or drift over time. A VID value that instructs the VRM to output a particular desired voltage when the IHS manufacturer builds the IHS may not result in the proper supply voltage in the future. This is due to the tendency of components to shift values over time.